What is it with these beasties ?...they are prolific !...are they harmless ?....do they carry disease ?

...we have a small colony that seem to thrive.....we're not overrun with them or anything like that but they do seem to do their own thing be it on the cold tiled floor of our downstairs loo.......on the carpet in the lounge and dining room......even sometimes off the ground in a cabinet !!

Don't misunderstand me...if you were to visit don't think you'd see the floor moving with these critters but they do make themselves known when you look for them....

..I reckon everyone has them.........but are they pests or companions ?

part of the wiki artical was always what we watched for.. Many years ago my mom had to deal with them here as they really got crazy in the linnen closet and runined a ton of towels and linnen table clothes etc.. They chewed tons of things up so watch for your couch fabrics etc.. they become good snacks!

The favorite food of silverfish is any matter that contains starch or polysaccharides, such as dextrin in adhesives. These include glue, book bindings, paper, photos, sugar, hair, and dandruff. Silverfish can also cause damage to books, tapestries, and textiles. Silverfish will commonly graze in and around showers, baths, and sinks on the cellulose present in many shampoos, shaving foams and so on. Apart from these cases, the damage caused by silverfish is negligible and they have no direct effect on human health beyond psychological distress to those who are frightened or disgusted by their appearance. However, they also have a bite which may cause irritation but has no long term effects. Other substances that may be eaten include cotton, linen, silk and synthetic fibers, and dead insects or even its own exuvia (moulted exoskeleton). During famine, a silverfish may even attack leatherware and synthetic fabrics. In extreme cases, silverfish may live for a year without eating.

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"Life is not measured by the number of Breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away."

My parents have the occasional silverfish scurrying around. I was always told they live on books (my parents have a lot of books).

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"It has been said that the primary function of schools is to impart enough facts to make children stop asking questions. Some, with whom the schools do not succeed, become scientists." - Schmidt-Nielsen "Memoirs of a curious scientist"

Many years ago when we had a particularly bad case of silverfish we found they'd made a home in a part-used and since abandoned box of perforated (and continuous-feed zig-zag folded) computer printer paper (remember dot-matrix printers?). They loved scurrying up and down through all the sprocket-holes at the edges!

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"It has been said that the primary function of schools is to impart enough facts to make children stop asking questions. Some, with whom the schools do not succeed, become scientists." - Schmidt-Nielsen "Memoirs of a curious scientist"

Ah, silverfishes... I remember when my family haven't moved yet, sometimes I took a nap in my sister's empty room and when I woke up, there were several bite marks of insects all over my arms. Back then I though those were mosquitoes, but someday I found these stingless scorpion-like critters and could only connect the dots years later that those were the ones who bit the napping me, not the mosquitoes... We have plenty of silverfishes in our old home...